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Perspective

View from the foot of the Rotunda looking across New Street and up High Street on November 15, 2018 (Image: Graham Young / Birmingham Live)

The main High Street entrance to the building is not in the middle.

So there are three stepped major panels to the left and five to the right of the central glass frontage.

Just like the ‘rule of thirds in photography’, perhaps this lopsided look will improve the general perspective of High Street when viewed from the foot of the Rotunda.

View from Moor Street Queensway includes the Rotunda and a worker abseiling down the front (Image: Graham Young / Birmingham Live)

By having the feature section further away, it will make the area look bigger than it really is.

On the Moor Street Queensway side, the central feature is also not in the middle of the building.

This time it is towards the left, not the right, which means the scale of the building in context with its position between the Bullring (left) and Marks & Spencer (right) will be different depending on which way you are walking or travelling along Moor Street Queensway.

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The softening process

CGI images from planning documents show how the panels will look when lit by uplighters.

They will help to define the subtle shift in shades depending on whether any particular panel is facing towards you or away from you.

The overall effect will be dramatically different to the famous aluminium discs - inspired by a 1960s' dress - which cover Selfridges nearby.

How the back of the Pavilions looked on February 27, 2014 (Image: Graham Young / Birmingham Live)

On Moor Street, the big unanswered question is whether the two styles will compliment each other (like St Martin the Bull Ring church and Selfridges) or clash (like the rough concrete of the BT building on Hill Street next to the classy bricks of the rear of the former Futurist Cinema).

On High Street, we will have to see whether the sheer dullness and size of the panels will be overbearingly dominant whenever the sun is not shinging and particularly during the short dark days of winter.

On Moor Street, whether we would have preferred to have retained the original brickwork which was so striking it could be seen in Steven Spielberg’s recent film, Ready Player One, in a scene shot from a Digbeth rooftop.

An upside down ziggurat which would have cost far less to refurbish than the £188 million spent on the Library of Birmingham, a replacement building so expensive the city council cannot afford to open it before 11am.

Had the rest of Paradise been cleared around it and the exterior been given some brilliant, modern lighting effects, the Central Library would have looked amazing, daring, distinctive and relentlessly futuristic.

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The verdict so far on the new Primark

A workman inside the last open space of a wall of protective sheeting when work began to dismantle the old Pavilions shopping centre - April 13, 2017 (Image: Graham Young / Birmingham Live)

Birmingham has an unfair reputation for being a concrete jungle when you study some of the extraordinary Victorian frontages on Corporation Street and New Street.

A nod back to an era when nobody had a computer to create design concepts that would leave so many 'modern' buildings covered in anonymous cladding.

The Victorians knew how to combine skill, craftsmanship and traditional materials with breathtaking effect.

Bring me sunshine! A New Street view of a scissor lift outside of the new Primark Birmingham Pavilions on September 27, 2018 (Image: Graham Young / Birmingham Live)

Times move on and production processes become ever more automated at the expense of flair.

But while some of the city’s new flagship buildings are still endearingly experimental, far too many anodyne apartment blocks are springing up all around us to reduce Birmingham’s architectural sense of identity.

Looking at the new Primark so far, the jury has to be out on the impact its brave new vision will have on the local built environment.

If they get it wrong, the next generation will no doubt want live up to Birmingham’s 1838 motto of ‘Forward’.